french troops secure one of the shares biggest uranium mines after the country's president confirms he asked paris for help fearing islamist attacks is as he pushes for a better deal from the nuclear dependent friends. while in neighboring mali eyewitnesses report a number of civilian casualties as french led troops battle islam is militants for control of the country. as john kerry starts his term as u.s. secretary of state a new study finds some foreign service personnel paying for the privilege to serve as embassadors by donating millions to get their cushy jobs. in kuwait yet another activist thrown in jail for criticizing the view mirror on twitter sparking protests against the country's rulers. the big picture up next stay with us here on

r.t. . i'm sam sachs in for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. remember last week when we got news that the economy shrank in the fourth quarter of two thousand and twelve well in just a moment in answer to why the economy shrank and why it could be an ominous sign that the deal our nation made with the devil several generations ago is about to come due and later it looks like the republican scheme to rig the electoral college had failed but now republicans in pennsylvania are trying something new i'll tell

you what it is and what impact it could have on the next presidential election and finally in tonight's daily take why is the n.r.a. making in the enemy's list. and we begin tonight with the deal a deal of the united states made a long time ago that is sealed our nation's fate today see german folklore tells a story of a man named faust he was bored with his life as a scholar and he was seeking unlimited knowledge power and pleasure so he made a deal with the devil to attain all of those things but in return foulest agreed to give the devil his soul at the end of twenty four years this is where the term a fallacy in bargain comes from it refers to someone willing to sacrifice their moral integrity just to attain power and pleasure for a limited time got it. well that brings us to the united states the most powerful

and wealthiest nation on the planet today we have a military bigger than the next seventeen top military nations combined and in terms of total wealth well the united states towards the rest of the world unfortunately though just like ballast all of this power and wealth did not come honestly it came as a result of a bargain a bargain with the devil of war the father of the constitution himself james madison warned early on by saying quote no nation can preserve can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare but as soon as world war two the supposed war to end all wars ended the united states got involved in the continual warfare game first there was an increasing war spending for korea and then to ensure that global capitalism reigns supreme to enrich the all of our class of bankers corporate executives and oil barons our military intervened all around the world throughout the one nine hundred fifty s. meddling in places like iran guatemala indonesia president eisenhower knew the consequences of this faustine bargain with the devil of war and how will us away

from within as he said it is one nine hundred fifty three across the veyron speech quotes every gun that is made every warship launched every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and who are not dead those who are cold and are not closed. all that was during a time when our nation was spending roughly fifty billion dollars a year on defense we spend almost twenty times that today but eisenhower did little to renegotiate the terms of this deal which is why he used his nine hundred sixty one farewell address to warn about the rise of the military industrial complex but our lawmakers didn't listen to eisenhower and then the vietnam war plus more covert wars in south america asia in the middle east the one nine hundred sixty s. and one nine hundred seventy s. the pentagon's annual spending jump to nearly two hundred billion dollars during the one nine hundred eighty s. spending again increased thanks to more covert operations and high tech missile defense boondoggle like star wars military spending in that decade increased nearly

three hundred fifty billion dollars the same time taxes were slashed and spending on social programs was cut in the soviet union fell in defense spending leveled off in the one nine hundred ninety s. but the perpetual war machine continued to grind on there was desert storm and iraq military intervention in kosovo air strikes in sudan another bombing raid on iraq to close out the decade and then george w. bush moved into the white house and i don't love it happened and then this happened to military spending it went up when up a lot to new wars were started in a brand new covert drone warfare program was unleashed all across the planet our defense budget tripled under bush and then obama we now spend upwards of a trillion dollars every year to maintain this deal with the devil of war we have between seven hundred and one thousand military bases of all sizes and purposes on the planet they include massive installments like force base in afghanistan and small secret facilities in africa used primarily to launch drones or defense and

war spending that we have ninety four percent of all federal income tax revenue that means almost every single dollar that you and i and everyone else in this country pay income taxes goes to supporting this massive military empire not education not health care not infrastructure but instead war and in return the billionaire. classes profited immensely with oil and shipping lanes wide open in favorable business deals in foreign markets but within the united states is rotting and this faustine deal is sunsetting we learned last week that the american economy contracted by point one percent in the fourth quarter despite the fact that overall consumption in the economy grew by two point two percent our economy shrank because the war budget shrank by twenty two percent that month and other words when missiles tanks and warplanes aren't being manufactured our economy runs into trouble as president obama said in his super bowl interview with c.b.s. on sunday. overall there were a lot of positive signs in the economy the big problem was defense spending was cut

twenty two percent it was the biggest drop in in forty years and it was very abrupt and it had to do with. you know folks being worried about the possible impacts of the fiscal cliff and what goes on here in washington. and she was so much of our economy dependent on perpetual war we officially have a war economy which means we must continue this endless war or suffer suffer further economic ruin beyond what we're already experiencing you know the rampa joblessness declining wages and spiraling budget deficits on the local state and federal level. but drive around the washington d.c. suburbs in virginia and you'll see enormous palaces built in gated communities where the war profiteers reside in two thousand and eleven these are the five biggest war profiteers took home a profit of thirteen point four billion dollars they've been the real winners in this fallacy and bargain and it's difficult to rectify this wealth across the potomac with the desperation across america yes we've acquired our enormous wealth and power for the few but the day when we must hand over our national soul as part

of this fallacy and bargain is quickly approaching do we really want to be a devilish empire that brings carnage to the rest the world where own population at home suffers we know how that story ends and ends in collapse it always has been throughout every empire in history so then how do we break this deal how do we take on the military industrial complex that james madison enjoyed eisenhower warned us about a test my next guests joining me are james lewis communications director of the center for arms control and nonproliferation and spokesperson for council for a livable world and the all mccabe senior writer at human events online and editor the guns and patriots welcome welcome us the oil sands are coming back and things that they don't know how to fix i'll be the spokesman for carnage and devilish partners and that's a sad thing that's why we bring you on the show every day you know so let's let's start we've got this sequester coming down the pike at the end of the month of march. this is going to cut roughly a half trillion dollars out of the pentagon budget james is this

a good start i mean can we let these cuts go through and do we actually need to go with more cuts down the road you know what the most important thing that has come out in all of this discussion is everyone's replayed the admiral role in quote that our national debt is not a lady our greatest national security risk we need to start looking at ways of paying down our deficit and everything has to be on the table including pentagon spending we need to be looking at ways to reshape the pentagon that don't reflect a cold war ideology we're facing new threats and new enemies that we've never faced before as opposed to a soviet union which we needed a nuclear stockpile to defend against those things are no longer needed and they're extremely expensive and this thought that these things create jobs nuclear weapons sit in silos and tanks in facilities that are mouth balled they don't actually create any jobs near what exactly is of the threat that the united states is facing that justifies a spending more on our military than the next seventeen nations combined well i think that. you know i think secretary panetta you know made that point for us on

the sunday shows when he said you know listen you know we knew that benghazi was having some trouble but it was seven hours away and we couldn't do anything about it and so if we have a military there it's not just you know the shores of the united states the united states is asked to defend their friends and allies around the world there are oppressed people around the world that are looking to the united states for protection and help and so we have because of those up like there's a lot of oppressed people who are looking at the united states to as someone who is occupying their countries dropping. all across the middle east. where we need where all all across from ok afghanistan has been occupied for the better part of a decade iraq remains occupied and has been for the better part of a decade and you could say that in the sense of having drone. flying above the skies in several countries we're basically occupying those countries as well because we can launch

a military strike on them on just someone driving down the road within an hour well i mean sure but the drone is not the same as occupation i would argue and i will remind you that afghanistan was a place where it was launched against the united states and is the policy of the government to make sure that afghanistan a particularly difficult place is no longer a place where we can launch attacks so there's a program underway to extricate ourselves from that we can argue whether that's being done well and i decade of war has necessarily. there's no time limit on a war but the most important thing here is you know these are a new type of threat than we've ever faced we're never going to see again attack coming we're likely to see an attack coming from a massive superpower we need to be investing in these types of programs and we're couldn't allow a spending their money on other than defense so there's a tough though i mean the defense you need more invent sam we have been dod the attacks we can look at investing in our diplomatic service corps which is

a separate part part of the second part under the purview of the secretary of defense that's responsible for keeping our diplomats safe that's something that severely underfunded the department of state is incredibly underfunded and they spend money on comics and they comics coming to visit they go to electric cars or big deficit hawk yessiree or huge deficit how can you possibly say that enormous defense budget in which of a trillion dollars is going to every single year has nothing to do with our deficit or should be taught no no no no and in fact i thought you were spot on when you were saying earlier you know about the fact that the if that the effect that the defense spending has on the economy obviously you know we have to look at it obviously there are things that can be cut but the idea that we don't meet the capability to protect ourselves and to protect our friends is absurd and remember too and i know you want to make another point the most expensive thing is peace. who are irreplaceable you take a sergeant who's been in for fifteen twenty years or you take

a navy seal or any of these people that we've trained and they're ready to go you can't replace them the way you can replace a tank and they're probably fifty sixty percent of our defense budget i would say that the best thing to do is not put them in a situation where we're going to have to replace them james. i think this is you know i wasn't expecting to agree with neal but i think you know we're good friends yeah you know we need to spend smarter on what we're doing we need to be smarter about what we're spending and you know the council for the coalition for fiscal responsibility which included several former joint chiefs of staff rahm full page ads in the city saying that we can decrease the amount that we spend make ourselves safer if we do it smartly and that's the task we've got to make sure that we're investing in the right things and not investing in the wrong things and that involves us a completely reshaping the way we do business i was willing to say was fairly reasonable time second class there's probably a ton of spending in the navy on these biofuels and other crazy sort of solar

schemes that we could probably cut completely forget about the fact that the strange thing that renewable energy is that yeah sure you still believe in the james lawrence but our guys know what i mean. i'll give you the after the break i'll give you the latest on the g.o.p. election rigging campaign coming up next. well. it's technology innovation all the developments from around russia we've got the future of coverage. wealthy british style.

markets why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report.

so if at first you don't succeed at rigging an election then try try try again in two thousand and twelve we saw all billionaires like sheldon adelson and the koch brothers spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to buy our elections trying to put in place a conservative house conservative senate conservative white house that would do their bidding we also saw the republican lawmakers do their part with new voter id laws and cuts to early voting hours these efforts succeeded to make minorities and

democratic voters wait much longer lines on election day than whites and republican voters but ultimately ultimately these efforts came up short president obama stayed in the white house the democratic majority in the senate actually got bigger and republican house came and it's received more than a million fewer votes nationwide than democratic house candidates and they were only able to keep the majority in the house republicans that is thanks to gerrymandering in two thousand and ten so when it comes to election rigging in two thousand and twelve conservatives failed. but they're already back at it again to the amazement of political observers around the nation early on this year republican state lawmakers in several blue states proposed changing how the electoral college gives its electoral votes a change that would give republicans a huge advantage in future presidential elections see rather than a winner take all system republicans one of these electoral college votes handed

out based on which candidate wins each individual congressional district in the state that is each individual congressional district in the state that was redrawn by republicans in two thousand and ten so they would be more republican districts than democratic districts under the scheme traditional blue states like pennsylvania which gave president obama all twenty of its electoral college votes last november would actually end up giving a majority of its votes to the republican candidate even if that candidate lost the popular vote this was such a toxic move on the part of summer republicans that many within the party a media only came out against it including ohio governor john kasich virginia governor bob mcdonald in machine michigan governor rick snyder in a bill to do just this in virginia was defeated in a state senate committee so after a few legislative defeats and several prominent republicans coming out against plans to regulate troll college in these several blue states it looked as though

republicans had come to their senses about about pursuing this blatantly undemocratic tactic to try and steal the election. but republicans in pennsylvania have now said not so fast according to the newcastle news pennsylvania's republican state senate leader dominic pledge he will introduce legislation that divides the state's electoral college votes proportionately based on the popular vote rather than the winner take all system that's currently in place and had this plan been in effect last november mitt romney would have received eight of pennsylvania's electoral college votes rather than the zero he actually received meanwhile of course all the red states like texas and oklahoma which vote for republicans will keep their winner take all system and while this latest scheme will benefit republicans quite as much as the last team which doled out electoral college votes based on congressional districts it will still make it much more difficult for democrats to win the white house in future elections so now that republicans have

shown this willingness to do this a willingness to blatantly rig future elections what should progressives be responding with what needs to be done to fix our broken political system to stop these sort of shenanigans in the future john nichols joins me now he's a washington correspondent at the nation magazine and he's the author of the book uprising john welcome back. it's great to be on with you and a terrific topic to be talking about yeah definitely i wanted to your opinion on this i mean you follow this stuff all the time are you surprised that republicans i mean as high up as france priebus the chairman of the r. and c. were actually endorse and pursue this sort of electoral college rigging scheme. no i'm not look party that has over the last couple of years structured all of its political initiatives toward advancing itself as an electoral entity scrapping policy left and right with with one goal and that is to maintain its position in

power is it's not surprising that they would be trying to gain the electoral college remember this is a party that tried to push out all sorts of voter id laws trying to get rid of same day registration they've tried to get rid of early voting gamed the system in key swing states around the country long lines so it was very very hard for people collar elderly folks to vote so no this doesn't surprise me and it doesn't surprise me that we're looking at pennsylvania the two states that they have wanted desperately are pennsylvania and michigan everybody's look at virginia florida and some other places but the reality is they want pennsylvania and michigan because those are two states where they have very can serve as legislatures that are willing to do whatever the marching orders and also where they have gerrymandered biggest trick so radically that you know on almost any system that they develop they're going to get

a lot of electoral votes yeah and that's the thing that's really troubling i think is the florida state speaker of the house who said this is basically changing the rules of the game this is unfair we're not going to do this here and you go in in two thousand and ten you gerrymander the districts and then you want to use those same gerrymandered districts to pick who becomes president this latest proposal out of pennsylvania though kind of gets away from the congressional districts and wants to do it based on popular. a vote is that something that might be a little bit more digestible to some or republicans who didn't like the congressional districts name. was clearly their next gambit and it has a certain appeal except that it runs itself through the most corrupt and immoral of political constructs and that is the electoral college remember they're not really going to distribute the electoral college votes based on popular vote if they were then you'd have a national system where you know i would be very simple we delineate the electoral college and simply say where we got the most votes was elected and if you wanted to

even take it down to percentages you'd still do it nationally you can't do it state by state and have some states in some states out because you created a dysfunctional system rewards for the parties that have the ability to change the rules in competitive states no rewards for the parties that don't have the ability to change the rules yeah and i mean if you touch on national popular vote is this is this a strategy that progressive should start pushing for already i think nine states have passed national missed national popular vote legislation which means they'll just give out all their electoral college votes to whichever person wins the national popular vote so if you get enough states that equal to seventy you've already killed the electoral college because the states will just determine it but not to a point but remember if you just do it at the two seventy level then the states that have been opted in could still kind of pool their votes and then the ones that have opted in are gave it back but it's i like national popular vote but i like it

for the reason that fair vote the voting reform group has put it forward not really as a construct to actually distribute the votes for president but as a way to show america that it's time to get rid of the electoral college so what i think progressive should be is yes pushing national popular vote saying we want to set up a system where we get some. power of the electoral college but alternately the goal should be a constitutional amendment to eliminate the electoral college something that richard nixon and hubert humphrey and bobby kennedy all supported back in the one nine hundred sixty s. we had the left in the right in favor of eliminating the electoral college and anybody who believes in seriously competitive politics should be in favor of that initiative above all definitely that is you know more democracy is a good thing and a popular what is more democracy when it comes down to it let's talk about money and politics here in two thousand and twelve we sold tons of talk about outside

money and politics was the first presidential election after citizens united we saw with karl rove pulling together hundreds of billions of dollars or so sheldon adelson spend more money in the election than any person in history has ever spent and then you know american election but ultimately conservatives didn't do nearly as well as they had hoped they were there was actually a pretty big night for democrats does that fact less in i mean does it decrease how important this topic is when it comes to money in politics i mean will people just forgive be like oh i guess it didn't have that much effect let's move on. down the least unless you believe that you know we should've stopped or experimenting on airplanes when the wright brothers only got up to thirteen minute or thirteen seconds right when you have a new construct it takes time to put into place the citizens united ruling would allow corporations to free up their treasuries and spend whatever they wanted to buy elections only came down in two thousand and ten this was the first presidential election in which they went into play they were able using super pacs

to buy the republican nomination for mitt romney that was an incredible accomplishment they were able also to back up their gerrymandering of congressional districts with huge amounts of money and keep the house of representatives despite the fact that one point four million more people voted democratic and republican so they accomplished quite a bit and anybody that doesn't think that they will refund. and hone their methods so that they can accomplish a lot more is the fact of the matter is barack obama held his own in the presidential race because he raised almost as much money as mitt romney but this is an unsustainable structure for progressives for grasses have got to focus in ashley and intensity and getting money out of politics is really only one way to do that we spoke just a moment ago about a constitutional ten second stroke we're going to elect the alledge let's have a constitutional amendment to get corporate money out of politics and let's get on it move to a mandatory i like your analogy just like the wright brothers who are just learning

how to fly with the plane the billionaires are just learning how much money they need to spend and what it takes to rob and steal an election here john nichols thanks so much for coming on. thank you so much good to be with you. i think. in the long and storied history of space exploration mankind has never ever sent a porn star into space but that's all about to change maybe in the spring of next year coco brown who's starred in such hits as a big two and it don't matter just don't buy the hive hopes to become the first adult film star to blast off into space brown is currently in the netherlands training with space x. c. a private company that hopes to make

a private space that hopes to make private space travel possible by spring of next year honey love as it is also known by the adult film industry is doling out one hundred thousand dollars of her hard earned dirty money to become one of the first private citizens in space brown has made it clear that she does not plan to have any form of sex while soaring through space she told him post that quote trying to have sex in space is. a little difficult especially if you're going to do gee you just really don't have that much control. it's got to be some pun in there somewhere but i can imagine what she's saying though if she's feeling adventurous she may be the first to join the fifty mile high club and if they eventually make a movie out of it is the title of journey to your anus already taken you know. coming up the days of junk food vending machines in our school may be numbered after the department of agriculture and now department of agriculture excuse me announced new rules last week eliminating greasy foods and sugary snacks and drinks

in our nation's schools but is this really about keeping american schoolchildren healthy or an example of the you know any state run amuck.